Movie Reviews By Bil Antoniou

Timecop

Relentlessly silly film about a futuristic world in which time travel is basically the flick of a light switch. The government has initiated an agency to enforce proper regulation of time travel to make sure that its technological advantages are not abused. Sadly, on the day that Jean-Claude Van Damme is appointed to this particular force, his wife is killed and, ten years later, he is barely emerging from his grief. Just in time, though, because he begins to suspect that a shady politician (Ron Silver) is trying to use time travel as a way to manipulate past events and become the nation’s president. Some nifty visual effects are combined with a rather fun idea for a plot, but Peter Hyams directs with a leaden hand and the whole thing sags under a lack of inspiration. Van Damme is game for the whole thing, but he can’t lift it out of the doldrums, nor is Silver a particularly charismatic villain.